Vue Storefront

What is Alokai

Alokai is a Frontend as a Service (FaaS) platform designed for composable commerce. Its main purpose is to help businesses build, deploy, and manage high-performance e-commerce storefronts with greater speed and flexibility. The platform works by decoupling the customer-facing frontend from the backend systems like e-commerce platforms, content management systems (CMS), and payment gateways. This allows development teams to work on the user experience independently, without being limited by the backend technology. Originally founded as Vue Storefront in 2017 by Filip Rakowski and Patrick Friday, the company rebranded to Alokai to reflect its expanded vision beyond a single framework. The company is headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, and serves enterprise clients globally.

Alokai Features

Alokai provides a suite of tools to manage the entire lifecycle of an e-commerce frontend.

• Alokai Storefront: This is a production-ready application that includes pre-built components and a complete user journey for e-commerce. It helps developers save significant time by providing a solid foundation to build upon, rather than starting from scratch.
• Alokai Connect: An API orchestration layer that acts as a middleman between the storefront and various third-party services. It simplifies integrations with leading e-commerce backends, CMSs, and search platforms, preventing complex and messy code.
• Alokai Cloud: A cloud hosting environment specifically optimized for e-commerce frontends. It offers high availability with a 99.9% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA), fast page loads through Server-Side Rendering (SSR) and caching, and robust security compliance with ISO/IEC 27001 standards.
• Alokai Console: A dedicated dashboard for monitoring and managing the storefront. It provides real-time insights into key performance metrics like CPU usage, request latency, and response codes, and sends instant alerts for any issues.
• Backend Agnostic Architecture: Alokai is not tied to any single backend. This gives businesses the freedom to choose the best-of-breed solutions for their needs and switch components without having to rebuild the entire frontend.

Alokai Pricing Plans

Alokai's pricing is tailored for enterprise and high-growth businesses and is provided on a custom quote basis. The plans are structured to meet different business needs and scale.

• Professional Plan: Aimed at businesses starting their journey into composable commerce. This plan typically includes access to the core platform, standard integrations, and community or standard support.
• Business Plan: Designed for growing companies that require more advanced features, a wider range of integrations, and dedicated support. It often includes higher performance tiers and more robust security features.
• Enterprise Plan: A fully customized package for large organizations with complex requirements. This plan includes everything from the Business plan, plus custom integrations, premium support, dedicated infrastructure, and the highest level of security and compliance.

Prospective customers need to contact the Alokai sales team to get a detailed quote based on their specific project requirements.

Alokai Free Plan

Alokai does not offer a perpetual free plan for its managed Frontend as a Service platform. It is an enterprise-grade solution that requires a commercial license. However, there are ways to experience the technology. Alokai offers personalized demos for businesses to see the platform in action. The core of Alokai originated from the open-source project Vue Storefront. Developers can still use the open-source version for free, but this requires self-hosting, manual integration, and community-based support.

How to use Alokai

Using Alokai involves a structured process for building and launching a composable storefront.

1. Discovery and Planning: The first step is to consult with the Alokai team to define the project scope. This includes choosing the e-commerce platform, CMS, search provider, and other third-party services you want to use.
2. Integration Setup: Using Alokai Connect, your development team links the selected backend services. The platform provides pre-built connectors that standardize the data flow, making this process much simpler than manual integration.
3. Frontend Development: Developers use the Alokai Storefront as a starting point. They can customize the pre-built UI components and themes to match the brand's design, and build new features as needed.
4. Deployment: Once the storefront is ready, it is deployed to Alokai Cloud. This managed environment is optimized for performance, ensuring the site is fast and can handle high traffic.
5. Monitor and Optimize: After launch, the Alokai Console is used to monitor the application's health, performance, and security in real-time, allowing teams to address issues proactively.

Pros and Cons of Alokai

Pros

• Flexibility: Its backend-agnostic nature allows businesses to connect with any e-commerce platform or API-based service.
• Speed to Market: The use of pre-built components and integrations can reduce development time by up to 50%.
• High Performance: The platform is built for speed, using modern technologies like SSR to ensure fast page loads and a better user experience.
• Scalability: Alokai Cloud is designed to handle large volumes of traffic and can scale with business growth.
• Active Community: It has a strong foundation in the open-source community, providing a large pool of resources and developer talent.

Cons

• Steep Learning Curve: For teams new to headless architecture, there can be a significant learning curve.
• High Cost: As an enterprise solution, the pricing can be a substantial investment, making it less accessible for small businesses.
• Vendor Lock-in: While it connects to many services, you become dependent on the Alokai ecosystem for frontend management and orchestration.
• Complexity for Simple Projects: For very simple e-commerce sites, the architecture and features might be more complex than necessary.

Alokai integrations

Alokai specializes in connecting with a wide range of best-of-breed commerce and content platforms through its Alokai Connect layer. This simplifies the integration process for developers.

• commercetools integration: Connects directly to the commercetools MACH-certified platform.
• BigCommerce integration: Provides a seamless connection for stores built on BigCommerce.
• Shopify integration: Allows businesses to use Shopify as a backend while running a high-performance Alokai frontend.
• Adobe Commerce (Magento) integration: Offers a headless path for merchants on the Magento platform.
• Contentful and Contentstack integrations: Enables powerful content management capabilities for the storefront.
• Algolia integration: Integrates a fast and relevant search experience into the e-commerce site.
• Stripe integration: Facilitates payment processing through a direct connection to Stripe's APIs.

Alokai Alternatives

• Next.js Commerce: An open-source starter kit from Vercel. It is more of a framework than a full FaaS platform, giving developers more control but requiring more setup and management.
• Nacelle: A composable commerce platform that focuses on ingesting data from various backends into a single API. It is a strong competitor, often compared for its data handling capabilities.
• Shogun Frontend: A frontend platform that combines a powerful page builder with a headless architecture. It is often favored by teams that want to give more control to marketing and content managers.
• Front-Commerce: A headless frontend solution that specializes in integrations with Adobe Commerce (Magento) and BigCommerce, making it a strong choice for businesses on those platforms.

Alokai API

Yes, Alokai provides a comprehensive API layer through its Alokai Connect product. It does not provide a single API key for the entire platform. Instead, it acts as an orchestration layer that standardizes how the frontend communicates with the APIs of various backend systems (like your e-commerce platform, CMS, or PIM).

Developers work with the Alokai SDK and integration modules, which provide a unified way to make API calls without needing to learn the specifics of each backend's API. You can find extensive developer documentation and guides on the official Alokai website under the 'Developers' section.

Here is a conceptual code example in TypeScript showing how a developer might fetch product data using the Alokai SDK:

import { sdk } from '~/sdk.config';

// Fetch a list of products from the integrated backend
async function getProducts(categoryId: string) {
  try {
    const { data } = await sdk.commerce.getProducts({ categoryId });
    return data;
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Failed to fetch products:', error);
    return null;
  }
}

In this example, sdk.commerce.getProducts is an Alokai SDK function that internally calls the appropriate API of the connected e-commerce platform (e.g., commercetools or Shopify).

Alokai Affiliate program

Alokai does not have a traditional affiliate program. Instead, it operates a Partner Program aimed at technology vendors, system integrators, and digital agencies that build e-commerce solutions for clients. The program is designed for collaboration on enterprise projects.

Details about revenue sharing or commissions are not publicly listed and are typically discussed during the onboarding process. The program focuses on mutual growth, co-marketing, and providing partners with the tools and support they need to succeed with Alokai.

To join, interested companies should visit the 'Partners' section on the Alokai website and fill out the application form to begin the partnership discussion.